The Responses of Pakistan and Turkey to Refugee Influxes: A Comparative Analysis of Durable Solutions to Protracted Displacements

Introduction

In the wake of recent political turmoil in Afghanistan and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, refugees have once again become a top agenda item for the foreign policies of countries of asylum, such as Turkey, Pakistan, Iran, and in Europe. The drastic overnight change of regime in Afghanistan (with the Taliban taking control of the country on August 15, 2021) pushed the United States and the coalition forces to find a safe exit route out of the country for Afghans at particular risk. To pursue a safe exit for Afghans in need of protection, the German Foreign Minister, Heiko Maas, traveled to Afghanistan’s immediate neighbors (Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan) including Turkey and Qatar (Federal Foreign Office 2021). While Maas placed great emphasis on convincing his counterparts in Turkey and Pakistan to temporarily take in Afghan refugees and to prevent an exit route to Germany, both Turkey and Pakistan refused to host additional refugees and urged burden sharing in relation to the Afghan crisis. Concerned with unprecedented internal displacements in Afghanistan, 5.5 million in 2021 (NRC 2021), the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has stated that “Turkey cannot handle an additional refugee burden” (Yackley 2021). Likewise, raising similar concerns, in the 76th session of the Third Committee Meeting of the General Assembly, Pakistan requested burden and responsibility sharing in relation to Afghan refugees (United Nations 2021).

The vast majority of refugees, 72 percent of the global refugee population, end up seeking refuge in neighboring countries (UNHCR 2021). In this context, Turkey with over 3.8 million refugees hosts the largest refugee population worldwide (ibid). With 1.5 million refugees, Pakistan ranks third in the list of countries with the largest refugee population (ibid). In response to rising refugee numbers and appeals for refugee burden sharing by asylum countries (countries home to the largest population of protracted refugees), the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) adopted a resolution affirming and supporting host countries, the Global Compact on Refugee (GCR) on December 17, 2018. ¹ The GCR seeks to achieve interlinked objectives that include, (i) easing pressure on host countries; (ii) enhancing refugee self-reliance; (iii) expanding access to third country solutions; and (iv) supporting return in safety and dignity (United Nations 2018, 4). The GCR qualifies as a soft law, and as such is not legally binding (United Nations 2018), which makes it a significant guiding document and global point of reference for drafting empirical responsibility sharing documents or policy frameworks. As a matter of international law, there is no obligation to share the refugee burden (Maley 2016, 134) and implementation of the GCR depends on states’ political will to implement its recommendations.

Scholars of different backgrounds have tried to address the issues of refugee burden or responsibility sharing from different but interrelated perspectives such as sovereignty, international regime, and refugee diplomacy (Hollifield 2004; Haddad 2008; Maley 2016; Micinski 2022). Haddad defines refugees as an inevitable part of international society (Haddad 2008). For Haddad, the refugee is a product of the modern nation-state system (Haddad 2008, 4). She argues that as long as the world is divided by territorial demarcations where each territory retains sovereignty and clearly defines and identifies insiders from outsiders, there will be refugees (ibid). Refugees are forcibly excluded from the political system (state) to a bigger international system where they find themselves in gray areas between sovereign rights and human rights (ibid). Adopting a similar perspective, William Maley argues that refugees reflect the imperfection in the operation of a system of assigned responsibility (Maley 2016, 75) between the realms of domestic sovereignty and international legal sovereignty. In other words, refugees are “located at the intersection between the national and international” (Haddad 2008, 3) where states govern conditions that determine the legal status (asylum seeker, migrant, immigrant, and refugee) and international agencies meet the humanitarian needs of refugees and asylum seekers in host countries.

However, within the current international refugee regime, what is important to explore is how states with different socio-political systems, and economic situations, respond to the plight of protracted refugees. While many discuss refugee response frameworks from the perspective of return, the durable solution which corresponds to the needs of the Global North (Mencutek 2022), durable solutions to the plight of refugees in the Global South, which hosts 83 percent of the world’s refugees (UNHCR 2021), receive little attention.

By conducting a historical and comparative analysis of Pakistan and Turkey’s responses and reactions to refugee influxes, this article tries to fill this gap. It comparatively examines how the governments of Pakistan and Turkey with different socio-political settings and institutional environments tackled the protracted refugee crises in their countries. Pakistan and Turkey are important case studies to examine state response and reaction to refugee influxes for a number of reasons. First, both countries host among the largest protracted refugee populations in the world. Second, Pakistan and Turkey developed idiosyncratic relationships with the international refugee regime in their efforts to manage the refugee crisis in their countries. The third reason for comparing Pakistan and Turkey is that both countries are Muslim nations and strong allies of Western powers. Fourth, Turkey’s compliance and commitment to European institutional frameworks, and Pakistan having no such concerns and commitment, provide an excellent example to compare differences and similarities not only in policy response to refugee influxes, but also in developing durable solution to protracted displacements.

Methodologically this research is based on in-depth study of secondary and primary sources including government reports, national and international legal frameworks, policy reports, Pakistan and Turkey’s refugee laws, and scholarly papers. By drawing on a wide range of data, this paper argues that the state’s ability to respond to refugee crises rests on three interrelated elements: (1) socio-political setting, (2) institutional environment, and (3) compliance and commitment to international principles and refugee regime. We then propose two specific hypotheses. First, states with stronger compliance and commitment to international regimes, including intergovernmental organizations, tend to display better performance in refugee management and policy development. Second, states with high structural and operational (high skilled workforce) capacity, including genuine political will, perform better in developing a productive long-term solution to the refugee crisis.

The first section of this paper provides a snapshot of key concepts and theoretical discussion on refugee politics, diplomacy, and management. The second section discusses the characteristics of migration flows in Pakistan and Turkey. Subsequently, the article draws on a historical and comparative analysis of Pakistan and Turkey’s responses and reactions to refugee influxes and it briefly outlines the policies and legal frameworks of each state. The last section concludes with the article’s applied and conceptual contribution to the field of refugee management together with a set of recommendations in relation to states’ effective responses to the refugee crisis.

Politics of Refugee, Refugee Diplomacy, and Management: A Theoretical Discussions

There is a large academic literature on the influence of politics in constructing countries’ refugee diplomacies and management (Hollifield 2004; Maley 2013; Krzyżanowski, Triandafyllidou, and Wodak 2018). Most of these discussions theorize the politicization of the refugee crisis by referring to “Islamic-inspired” terrorist attacks in the West (Scribner 2017, 264; Sıddıkoğlu 2017), and domestic political pressure to control and manage borders, deportation, security, protection, humanitarianism, and voluntary return, including North-South and South-South return agreements (Krzyzanowski, Triandafyllidou, and Wodak 2018; Mencutek 2022). The existing literature provides significant insight into the politics of refugees, diplomacy, and border management. Yet, analytical and empirical analysis of real case studies remain vital to understanding how states with different governing structures and capacities develop refugee policies and collaborate with other stakeholders, including countries of origin and regional and international organizations. Likewise, it is important to explore how differences in the political systems and social contexts in countries have been significant factors in determining political and social attitudes toward refugees.

The existing theories on refugee crises agree on the absence of an empirical global roadmap on refugee protection, and the lack of political will to meet the multiple challenges posed by refugees, such as reception, integration, resettlement, voluntary return, and deportation in the global context (Maley 2016; Mencutek 2022; Micinski 2022). For Micinski (2022), a refugee crisis transcends state capacity and capability because “states cannot cope with an overwhelming number of people arriving in a discrete period of time” (p. 4). Responding to a refugee crisis is a complex task that requires coordination across multiple stakeholders — state and non-state actors — operating across international borders (Jones and Teytelboym 2017, 667). When challenged by mass refugee influxes that they cannot address unilaterally, states seek a credible partner or subcontract the work to an international organization (Micinski 2022, 24). Micinski (2022) draws a proportional line between a state’s capacity and the number of refugees it can process (p. 4). He argues that the level of administrative skills, economic resources, and political will determines the nature of the partnership, agreement, and responsibility-sharing between the host, transit, and countries of origin (ibid).

However, the refugee crisis depends upon the perception by states of refugees as a priority policy agenda, which varies according to its geographic, economic, political, and social circumstances. For example, for the Global North priority policy agenda in relation to refugees may include deterrence (close-door policy), resettlement, voluntary return, or deportation, whereas for the Global South the priority policy agenda may be the issues of refugee burden and responsibility sharing. Linking these two diverse but interrelated policy agendas requires the art of diplomacy. Substantial work in this context is evident in William Maley’s (2016) writings on refugee diplomacy. Maley (2016) opens a constructive discussion on how states use different tools and platforms to negotiate a settlement with other state and non-state stakeholders. He further argues that states utilize international and regional multilateral platforms as a key venue to bargain over matters relating to refugees (ibid). These multilateral platforms serve two key functions; first, they articulate a range of soft laws on refugee issues, not binding documents; second, they provide a venue for side-line, bilateral discussions outside the formal interactions (ibid., 127–128).

Since diplomacy is a social practice (ibid), it requires certain operational competencies and capabilities — individual and organizational capital — to perform policy functions (Wu, Ramesh, and Howlett 2015, 166). Wu, Ramesh, and Howlett (2015) divide the key competencies of policy capacity into three types: analytical, operational, and political (ibid). Each of these competencies involves capabilities at three levels: individual, organizational, and political (ibid). Likewise, individual and institutional competencies and capabilities are indispensable elements of migration management. However, meeting these prerequisites is highly challenging even for countries with considerable years of experience in hosting large numbers of refugees. For example, despite the development of policies, and the establishment of responsibilities of various stakeholders at national and provincial levels in countries like Pakistan and Turkey, refugee management has been hampered by structural (e.g., shortfalls in the administrative organization) and operational (e.g., lack of highly skilled workforce) challenges. In this context, Maley notes:

Political leaders who set objectives for diplomats may be unrealistic, naïve or indifferent to the challenge of matching ends and means. Diplomats themselves, even if they have clear ideas of their objectives, may be thwarted by lack of resources or inconsistencies between objectives defined by political leadership. Above all, in democracies, political leaders are prone to aspire to re-election, and this creates a strong inbuilt bias in favour of policies designed to fit relatively short electoral cycles (Maley 2016, 141).

Mencutek (2022), discussing the geopolitics of return from host to origin countries states that politics play a substantial role in negotiations between the destination and origin countries. She argues that while origin countries “may entertain returns negotiation to bolster their international standing or in view of domestic electoral politics,” host governments “may actively lobby the international community, including the UNHCR and EU or allied forces or donors for immediate returns (citations omitted)” (Mencutek 2022, 5).

To summarize, no matter how liberal norms such as sustainable development, gender equality, human rights, and good governance are integrated into the policy portfolio of the international organization, states set conditions that determine refugee status. Moreover, states continue to preserve their de facto importance domestically and internationally when it comes to taking decisions against the refugee crisis. For example, Japan as the third largest economy and party to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, practices a rigid refugee policy (Siddikoglu 2016a, 45–46). The Japanese state agencies govern and control the commanding heights in developing and implementing refugee policies such that no one, including the judiciary, can override refugee policy decisions taken by the bureaucracy (Junichi 2006, 221–222). As noted earlier, differences in the political system, history, experiences hosting refugees, culture, and membership in regional and international intergovernmental organizations have been significant factors in determining political and social attitudes toward refugees. The following section will provide further details on these points.

Migration Characteristics of Pakistan and Turkey

Pakistan is a country of migration with a diverse pattern of mobility, including out-emigration, transit migration, internal displacements and in-migration (Kamili-Chirani 2021). The first mass forced displacements from and to Pakistan occurred in 1947 as a result of the dissolution of the British Raj, the rule of the British Crown on the Indian Subcontinent (Malik 1999, 56). On the other hand, founded on the legacy of the Ottoman Empire, as a modern nation-state, Turkey’s migration history can be traced back to the first quarter of the century when Muslim migrants from dispersed lands comprised one-third of the Anatolian population. The migration from the countries of the former Empire to Anatolia continued throughout history, while slightly decreasing after 1950 (İçduygu, Erder, and Gençkaya 2009, 92–93). Migration in Pakistan and Turkey revolves around four types of mobilities: (1) out-migration, (2) transit, (3) internal displacements, and (4) in-migration.

Comparison of Pakistan and Turkey’s Reactions and Responses to Asylum Seekers

“100 million people have now been forced to flee their homes. This is not a refugee crisis — refugees are not the cause. This is a political crisis, and it will only be resolved with solidarity and political will.”

UN Secretary-General António Guterres

It is hard to detach refugee issues from politics. Whether climate- or conflict-induced, internally displaced or forced to cross international borders, in principle displacement affects all aspects of peoples’ lives. In the context of refugees, it is the state that opens or closes its borders to refugees and defines who can enter or cannot, with which rights and for how long (Micinski 2022, 6). In other words, “non-state actors do not have legitimate power to grant asylum status or detain a migrant . . . only state institutions have the sovereign right to use . . .force and bureaucratic power over migrants” (ibid., 25).

However, this is not to say that non-state actors are not important players in providing protection to refugees. Refugees are the products of the failure of a state to fulfill its sovereign obligation to provide its citizens with social, economic, and political protection. In the absence of state protection, refugees are forced to flee their homes and seek protection in a foreign country where as non-citizens they do not have such entitlements. In such conditions the international community can play a decisive role in manipulating host states’ migration policies to provide socioeconomic entitlement to refugees when they otherwise may have no such rights as foreigners. To understand to what extent the international community has been influential in shaping migration policies of host states, in the following sections we comparatively explore the role of international refugee regimes in shaping refugee policies and the institutional environments of Pakistan and Turkey.

Refugee Policies

Despite not being a party to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of the Refugee and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, Pakistan welcomed as prima facie refugees over a million Afghans who fled their homes due to political instability in the1970s and following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 (Rizvi 1984, 42). As war spread across the country the number of Afghan refugees drastically increased, reaching 3.2 million between 1981 and 1990 (IRIN 2012). Pakistan adopted an open-door policy throughout 1980s. The President of Pakistan, General Zia-ul Haq, referred to Afghans as Muhajirin (qualified refugees under Islamic law) and urged Pakistanis to have religious compassion with them (Siddikoglu 2016a, 23).

The religiously oriented refugee diplomacy was a political decision, one intended to control rather than manage the refugee crisis and intended to serve Pakistan’s domestic and international interests. At the domestic level, faith-based initiatives were intended to win public support and promote Afghan refugee integration through religious affinity. The terms Muhajir and Ansar (the one who helps ² ), were used as a political discourse to not only win hearts and minds of the public to have sympathy with Afghan refugees but also to share their livelihood and economic opportunities with refugees as a religious obligation. At the same time, the religious justification, helped Pakistani authorities to mitigate the suffering of many Pakistanis who were already struggling with scantly available social services and economic opportunities. In the 1970s Pakistan was crippled by a series of economic and political challenges including the separation of East Pakistan as an independent state of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, the influx of refugees from East Pakistan, and US economic and military sanctions in response to Pakistan’s nuclear activities (Pandey 2018).

Like Pakistan’s Afghan refugee diplomacy in the 1970s, the Turkish government adopted an “open door policy” to the first Syrian refugee influxes in 2011 (İçduygu 2015, 3; Kanat and Üstün 2015, 12). During this period the Syrian refugees were referred to as “guests” (Gülmez 2019), in the context of hospitality based on the temporality and return of the guest. The expectation that the Syrians would stay in Turkey only temporarily and soon return to Syria shaped public and state perceptions in Turkey until 2016. However, as the conflict continued and the protracted nature of Syrian displacement became clear, the term “integration” was added in Turkish Syrian refugee diplomacy (İçduygu and Şimşek 2016, 61).

The Disaster and Emergency Management Agency (in Turkish AFAD) and the Turkish Red Crescent (Kizilay) were the key institutions responsible for providing the first Syrian arrivals with emergency shelter. With the help of AFAD and Kizilay, over 272,000 Syrian arrivals were placed in 25 camps, scattered in 10 provinces across the country (Kanat and Üstün 2015, 17). These camps were praised by the international community for their high standards in meeting the needs of the Syrians (Chatty 2017, 30). However, although some Syrians continue to live in these refugee camps, most preferred to live in or near urban areas. According to the Directorate of Migration Management, the number of Syrian refugees living in camps fell below 50,000 at the end of 2022 (GİB 2022b).

In Pakistan, the UNHCR has become a key partner of the government that established several camps for Afghan refugees. The refugee camps were built in the vicinity of the major cities where Afghan refugees were allowed to build their local markets, and open small businesses and carpet weaving factories. In 1995 there were about 300 refugee camps (70 percent were in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province formerly known as North-West Frontier Post, NWFP and 25 percent in Baluchistan province), which were mainly inhabited by Afghan Pashtuns (e.g., in 2005 Afghan Pashtuns comprised 81.5 percent of Afghan refugees in Pakistan; Issa, Desmond, and Ross-Sheriff 2010).

Pakistan’s refugee policy underwent a significant change in the 1990s. Following the collapse of the last communist regime in Kabul in 1992, return became a top agenda of Pakistan’s refugee diplomacy. Jointly with the UNHCR, Pakistan launched an assisted voluntary return program (AVR) which was successful in returning about 1.4 million refugees to Afghanistan within one year (ibid). However, as the civil war continued, the number of Afghan returnees declined. The emergence of the Taliban in 1994 led to a humanitarian crisis and the second wave of forced migration from Afghanistan to Pakistan began.

Pakistan adopted a preventive policy response against the second wave of Afghan refugee influx. The government of Pakistan officially closed the borders and declared that refugees arriving after 1997 would no longer be considered as refugees on a prima facie basis (Langenkamp 2003). The situation worsened when Pakistan was sanctioned by the United States and other Western states for testing a nuclear weapon in 1998 (ibid). In the wake of worsening economic situations, Pakistan formally declared that Afghan refugees (including those who had been granted a priori refugee status) in the country were subject to the 1946 Foreign Act and therefore subject to deportation and fines for living in Pakistan without a proper visa and documentation (ibid). This situation left nearly three million Afghan refugees in a severe humanitarian crisis. Given the fact that Afghan men were traditionally responsible for physically guarding their families and ensuring their economic wellbeing, the arbitrary detention and forced deportations of (mostly) men left Afghan households vulnerable to dire security and economic situations.

Turkey’s prima facie diplomacy lasted only five years and ended in 2016 (İçduygu and Şimşek 2016, 61). By the end of 2016, it was clear to the public and the Turkish government that the Syrians were not temporary “guests, but rather refugees seeking permanent resident status. This change in perception shaped state policy toward Syrian asylum seekers at the macro, meso, and micro levels.

At the macro-level, Turkish diplomacy focused on international cooperation. In 2016, after a series of negotiations with the EU, the Turkish government signed the 18 March Agreement with the EU (Council of Europe 2016). In fact, this agreement was developed after mass influxes of refugees to the EU countries in 2015, which was caused by the increasingly negative attitudes and perception of host communities about Syrian refugees. The agreement was based on bilateral negotiations between Turkey and the EU in which the EU promised to waive visas for Turkish citizens and provide financial support of EUR 3 billion to the Turkish government to provide for the Syrian refugees, while Turkey agreed to control irregular movement to Europe (İçduygu and Şimşek 2016, 61).

At the meso-level, the first initiative after 2016 developed a border policy to stop the flow of migrants from Syria to Turkey. In this context, the Turkish military carried out five military operations between 2016 and 2020 to create a 30-km safe zone on Syrian soil and pave the way for repatriation of Syrians (Yeşiltaş 2020). According to Yeşiltaş this has been a significant military diplomacy that played a key role in halting further refugee influxes to Turkey (ibid).

At the micro-level, the political reaction to Syrian refugees was de facto acceptance that the Syrians would remain in Turkey (İçduygu and Şimşek 2016, 61). One of the key initiatives in this context was the provision of work permits to Syrian with temporary protection status (ibid). Despite the limitation in the implementation of the policy the provision of work permits to Syrians with temporary protection status can be seen as a significant initiative toward the integration of Syrians into local societies. Another policy developed in the context of integration was the inclusion of Syrians into society through education. In 2013, the Turkish government allowed Syrians to set up temporary education centers to enable Syrian children to have access to education (Alpaydın 2017, 39) and Syrians established a number of temporary education centers in their localities. In 2016, the Ministry of Education (MoE) decided to close the Syrian temporary education center within three years and allowed Syrian children to be enrolled in Turkish public schools (Gümüş et al. 2020, 4). The MoE policy was successful in enrolling more than 60 percent of Syrian children in Turkish public schools in 2020 (Aksoy 2020, 44).

Moreover, the policies in relation to the closure of refugee camps and resettlement of refugees to urban areas in 2018 contributed to the integration of Syrian refugees into local communities. However, amid a recent increase in the number of irregular migrants and a spike in xenophobic sentiment, the government has started enforcing strong security measures along Syrian and Iranian borders including promoting voluntary return of refugees and asylum seekers to their countries of origin.

In Pakistan militarization and politicization of Afghan refugees restricted the development of civil society organizations working with Afghan refugees. In other words, Afghan refugees were highly politicized and armed to serve the strategic interests of Pakistan and its Western allies during the Cold War period. What is even more surprising is that the international community not only de facto legitimized Pakistan’s Afghan refugee policies but also funded them (Grare and Maley 2011). The social issues of Afghan refugees with reference to culture, social interaction, and integration have not only been widely disregarded in Pakistan but also by the international community, academics, and media.

At the macro-level, geopolitics — including Pakistan’s relations with international and regional actors (the United States and European Union), the Cold War, and attempts to contain Indian influence in Afghanistan (Siddikoglu 2016b, 833) — remained key factors shaping Pakistan’s policies and reactions toward Afghan refugees. In other words, Pakistan used Afghan refugees as a tool to leverage its geostrategic and political interests in the region. According to Stedman, “in Pakistan, UNHCR chose to work with refugees, even though it understood that they would be accomplices to manipulation” (Stedman 2003, 175). Stedman further argues that:

In the post-Cold War era, despite knowledge of the deleterious effects of refugee manipulation on regional and international security, the major powers and the Security Council had treated such manipulation as a vexing humanitarian issue and not as a tread to international peace and security” (ibid., 177).

Stedman sees refugee manipulation as a “problem endemic to the United Nations” (ibid., 186). The absence of standards that could allow refugee agencies such as UNHCR to refuse to engage in situations where the principal recipients of aid blatantly manipulate refugees for political interests allowed countries like Pakistan to continue refugee manipulation (Grare and Maley 2011). The Afghan refugee crisis remains a potential source of leverage whenever Pakistan considers the problem “intractable and at the same time a bargaining tool with Afghanistan and the international community” (ibid., 9).

At the meso-level, statutory provisions, including legal and policy frameworks, have been influenced by domestic and wider regional political pressures For example, registration, determination of legal status and rights of Afghan asylum seekers have long been subject to change and ambiguity under changing political situations in the country.

At the micro-level, socio-economic hardship, insecurity due to rising sectarianism and terrorist attacks became decisive elements shaping public perception of Afghanistan refugees. Deteriorating security situations in the country, with 47,500 people killed between 2003 and 2013 largely by al-Qaeda and their affiliates, including Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), has been a key factor in changing Pakistan’s behavior toward Afghan refugees (Yusuf 2013, 8). The attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar in 2014 by the TTP that resulted in the deaths of 145 people, including 132 children, entirely changed both public and state attitudes toward Afghan refugees (Bjelica 2016). Despite the government of Pakistan and UNHCR’s statement that there was no evidence that registered Afghans had ever been involved in terrorism-related activities in Pakistan, the government initiated a crackdown that subjected Afghan refugees to arbitrary detention, harassment, extortion, bribes, demolished homes, beating, and forced deportation (Human Rights Watch 2017, 13).

Conclusion

For Pakistani strategists and policymakers, the issue of Afghan refugees has always been a matter of politics. Thus, Pakistan’s refugee diplomacy has remained short-term, inconsistent, temperamental, and subject to drastic change and ambiguity. By contrast, Turkey institutionalized refugee management by developing administrative frameworks, refugee policies and legal documents. As a result, Turkey gained ground in largely developing constructive long-term policies to meet its Syrian refugee crisis.

In this article, we tried to answer the central question of how Pakistan and Turkey with different governing structures and capacities developed refugee policies and implemented them. As we have pointed out, three elements are vital in dealing with protracted refugee crises: political will, institutional infrastructure, and engagement with regional and international regimes. Not being a party to the 1951 Convention, and thus with no fear of legal obligation for its Afghan refugee policies, Pakistan used refugees as leverage to gain strategic and political objectives whenever it deemed necessary.

A significant number of studies criticize Turkey for using refugees as a potential source of leverage for political purposes. However, Turkey’s compliance and commitment to European legal frameworks including its status as a party to the 1951 Convention has largely influenced and aligned its refugee policies with international refugee principles. Yet, politicization of refugee issues, changing macro-political dynamics and domestic political pressure (local and national elections) precluded developments in the areas of refugee management.

This paper shows that no matter how states define refugees in relationship to sovereign rights, the management of refugee crises depends on state capacity. Although, states can control the circumstances that determine the future of refugees, regional, inter-governmental and international refugee regimes are essential actors when it comes to developing long-term solutions to protracted crises. The paper also showed that hosting refugees for decades does not reflect state competency in managing refugee crises. Rather, competency in developing refugee policy requires three types of capacity: institutional, policy, and governing. Institutional refers to administrative ability to produce the desired output; policy to developing smart productive long-term policies to respond to refugee crises; and governing to incorporating the complex relationship between domestic and international aims.

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